FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

2010.

Don't mourn. Organize.

Whoever came up with the phrase “Success has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan” never got involved in politics. We’ve spent the last two weeks being told the paternity of November 4th’s defeat; whether by people who would very much like for all of us to just lie down and die, or by people who absolutely know that if We Would Only Do X then we shall achieve the Millennium. I’m sure that this is going to be a very fascinating and relevant conversation, and I’m also sure that the people engaged in it will eventually come up with many critical insights that will help the GOP in its future endeavors. While that’s going on, let me pass the time by talking about something a good deal more immediate: your Congressional District.

Yes, yours.We want to know everything about your district. We want to know where it is, who represents it, what Party he or she is in, what shape he or she is in, and who his or her likely opponents are going to be. We want to know the state of the district, county, and state GOP parties, including who to go to for volunteering and where to send money. We want to know what people care about in your district, and what issues are their hot-buttons. And if there are deficiencies in any of the above – no money for the local GOP, or the lack of an easy fund-raising mechanism, or a Democratic incumbent running unopposed – we want to hear about that, too.

What we don’t want is to have you tell us about this in the comments section, which is why I’ve turned off comments for this post. We want you to tell us in diary entries. We have a feature that will allow people to search RedState by state, as long as the state’s name is in the tags. So write some diaries about your district. Include also in tags the district itself, using the “XX-00″ format (ex MD-07, PA-12). When you write about your district, include working links to the local, county, and state GOP organizations. If they don’t have any, well, there’s your next post.

Oh, yes, it doesn’t stop there. Once you have that basic information, we want you to keep on top of the state of your district. I recommend that you stay out of local intra-party feuds, and concentrate on the important matters, like what issues energize your neighbors. I also recommend that you keep track of your Congressman, and let me be blunt: if he’s a Democrat, we want to hear when he’s messed up. If he’s a Republican, we want to hear when he’s done something right. When the reverse of either scenario is true, there are plenty of activist sites run by the Other Side that can handle reporting that. They feel no shame in being partisan, so neither should you.

In other words, this is all about getting your head back in the game. We have two years before the 2010 election. We can spend them contemplating our navels, or we can spend them doing useful work in giving the rest of the Party critical information about the building blocks of a future Congressional majority.

Your call.

Moe Lane

PS: There is no such thing as an impossible district for Republicans. This is a lie told to you by Democrats who want you to give up while they steal districts from us. There are merely insanely hard districts for Republicans. Make the Other Side spend resources for them anyway. We fought the 2004 Presidential election on their turf; they fought the 2008 Presidential election on ours. Notice what happened?